Sunday, January 6, 2013

Student for a Day Video

In a class discussion about 'how technology has shifted school,' the discussion got pretty heated.

Students thought 'school schedules are often organized by adults.'

So...

What is the school schedule like through the eyes of a student?

Do school schedules meet the needs of students educationally and socially? 

How can the 'student experience' be improved?

How does the school schedule effect families?

Five teachers became a 'Student for a Day' to find out. Here are their thoughts on the experience (and some good humor) in the full video below.

Their experiences lead to some timely questions to answer in education. 

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject too. Feel free to send me a note.

Thanks to all involved in this great project, especially our dedicated A block Tech Research class who conjured up this great idea. Special thanks to Meg Kenny, Assistant Headmaster (and also a 'Student for a Day' in the video).

We had a blast working on it and hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for tuning in, AP



BBA Student for a Day Project from Adam Provost on Vimeo.

#edchat

5 comments:

  1. Brilliant! What a great idea, and well presented video - congrats to all involved. I heard from the teachers-as-students so many of the same things that I hear from my two actual students over and over, year after year. It will be interesting to see what changes get implemented, but the first step is to be open and put yourself in a position to learn. Great job. -Diana Pagnucco

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  2. Inspiring! I've been thinking about my own need to understand a student's day, and have talked about following a random student's schedule, but I never made the time to do this. I really will follow up and ask my principal to arrange for a group of us to do this. In fact, it seems to me that we (teachers) should be required to do this once in every re-licensing cycle. It was interesting that the teachers had to complete homework and lug around books; how did you decide which classes and assignments? Well done, folks!

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    1. Hi Lauren, We designed the class schedule for the teachers following something close to 'the typical student schedule' framework. IT was interesting to see and hear much of the anxiety from the teachers. Many requested schedule changes. The students came up with the idea of making them go the 'add/drop' process as a student would ; )

      The original request was to have three teachers do this over a two day period: Homework the night before, class day, homework, class day. Adding in assigned extra-curricular projects too. We had to play some poker with the structure. The school decided in this first run to adopt a five teacher, one day experiment. We're hoping the two day experience comes to fruition in the next thread. We're proposing doing this twice per year. Many faculty have expressed interest to be a 'Student for a Day' when we do this again.

      It's stellar in-house PD actually with little expense.

      Lugging books, coats, etc, especially during transition times between classes is all part of understanding classroom space and daily flow from a student perspective. We're a campus here and folks carry a lot with them. The students wanted people to see that, and the perspective of sitting in the classroom space rather than mentoring / instructing in it.

      We've had many requests for more information on this project. Happy to share and chat anytime. Designing the next one already. We'll be including things like... 'and by the way, you're too young to drive yourself to school.' Adam

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  3. Awesome way to teach empathy to educators!! Thanks for putting this together.

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